Welcome to Online Insider ...
... the editorial blog by Marydee Ojala, Editor of ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals. ONLINE Insider intends to extend the reach of the print publication, presenting a more timely commentary on the products, people, and events that shape today's online world. It explores new technologies as they impact the working lives of information professionals, explains resources for specific topic areas, and expounds on information management tools and techniques.

In Hong Kong, Boy Scouts are looking for copyright infringers, by which they apparently mean music downloads, according to an article in yesterday’s New York Times . The U.S. Boy Scouts said they had no plans to implement a similar program here. When my kids were in the Scout program, they went camping and did nature study stuff. There was a Computer merit badge that had a requirement to say why copying software was illegal, but there was certainly nothing resembling this Hong Kong project. Maybe camping isn’t part of the HK Boy Scout program.

I’ve never used Gale’s Newsearch database (file 211 on Dialog) all that much, but delved into it this morning to compare with some Factiva searches I’d done. I was surprised to see older articles in there. Has the scope of this database changed? I checked and the documentation says it’s supposed to have the latest 45 days of records from 9 Gale databases. So why are there 47,906 records from 2003, 1,195,030 from 2004, 1,413373 from 2005, and 77,958 from 2006? That’s a pretty loose definition of 45 days, isn’t it?

In the midst of doom and gloom, it’s always good to find something really positive about the profession, such as this Washington Post article praising the librarians at the paper. And this isn’t just the “Oh I just love libraries” claptrap, it’s grounded in real world research done by the librarians at the WP in support of the reporters. Some interesting projects here and some fantastic work by the librarians. Congratulations!